The marketing concept commonly known as "impulse buying" has been used effectively in a variety of retail establishments including supermarkets, convenience food stores, and pharmacies. The idea behind impulse buying is that customers must see certain products before they are motivated to buy. In order to promote implulse buying, such products must be displayed attractively in a location in the store by which most customers are likely to pass.
Various types of display techniques have been employed to promote impulse buying. Supermarkets, pharmacies and other retail establishments display articles on hooks, shelves or in bins at the checkout counters where payment is made for one's purchases. Racks or other multiple shelf displays are often found at the ends of aisles, and a variety of smaller, portable displays are often placed in aisles of supermarkets or pharmacies.
Although displays of the type described above may, in some instances, improve the sales of products which would normally be located on aisle shelves of retail establishments, such displays have deficiencies. Shelves or racks positioned at the ends of aisles closely resemble the aisle shelves and often are not any more effective in drawing the customer's eye to the products thereon than the aisle shelves. Portable displays positioned in the center or at one side of the aisles must be relatively small to avoid disruption of customer traffic flow and thus only a limited number of products can be displayed thereon.
Efforts have also been made to generate impulse buying of food products requiring refrigeration. Article displays of this type have generally included transparent doors or walls with shelves which are angled upwardly from front to back so that all articles on the shelves may be seen by customers. Usually these displays are permanent wall-mounted units having large clear glass doors which provide access to the interior.
Permanent wall-mounted, refrigerated article displays of the type described above present several disadvantages from the standpoint of promoting effective impulse buying. Only the front panel or door of such display devices is clear and thus the product it contains can only be viewed from one direction. In addition, the wall-mounted units typically are permanently mounted in a particular aisle and not portable to various locations around the store. Items such as soft drinks, fruit juices, wine, prepared sandwiches and the like might sell much more quickly if the display apparatus could be moved to a location near the checkout counter of the store or other areas of high customer traffic. Marketing with impulse buying is effective only when the product is located within the customer's view, and permanently mounted wall units often are located in areas of low customer traffic.
Portable, refrigerated display devices have been proposed to improve the effectiveness of impulse marketing compared to wall-mounted displays. Portable, refrigerated displays generally include a clear housing mounted atop a base having rollers for movement of the display to the desired location. The housing includes a plurality of spaced shelves which are accessible by opening a single door mounted to the housing. Display devices of this type are portable and permit in some instances 360.degree. viewing of the articles placed therein. With such display devices, however, the articles are stacked side-by-side therein which presents the problem of concealing those articles that are stacked in the middle of the storage racks or shelves.